Boat 2022

Nick Alm's painting, "Boat," uses a muted palette of blues and grays to create this quietly unsettling scene. I imagine him layering thin washes of color, building up the image slowly, like a photograph developing in a darkroom. There's something so vulnerable about the woman standing in the water, her gaze fixed on us. I wonder what Alm was thinking about as he painted her. The texture of the paint is smooth, almost porcelain-like, which adds to the dreamlike quality of the scene. Her pale skin shimmers against the dark water, drawing you in. It’s a painting about loneliness, about being adrift. That tiny boat way off in the distance looks like a symbol of escape or maybe just a reminder of how vast and empty the world can feel sometimes.